Harlem, N.Y., conference held on housing crisis

Following are excerpts from a June 2 press release.

On June 1st and June 2nd at St. Ambrose Church, hundreds of tenants and activists from Harlem and throughout New York City convened two days of plenary sessions and workshops at the 1st annual Harlem Anti-Gentrification Conference sponsored by the Harlem Tenants Council and the Delano Village Tenants Association.

The conference entitled “Race, Class and Gentrification in Harlem” addressed a number of issues that included rising evictions, luxury developments adversely impacting Harlem’s already inflated rental market and Columbia University’s expansion. According to Nellie Hester Bailey, Director of the Harlem Tenants Council, the conference critically examined public policies that facilitated an escalating housing crisis throughout New York City, and in particular Harlem.

Bailey said, “The affordable crisis has moved us beyond shallow rhetoric of how bad landlords are when in fact what we need is a pro-active independent tenant movement addressing eminent domain abuse for private profit, legal representation for indigent tenants, vigorous state/city investigation of landlord abuse and accountability of elected officials starting with mayor Bloomberg.”

Valerie Orridge, President of the Delano Village Tenants Association, a seven building complex of 1,800 units in Harlem said, “Our new owners purchased the complex a year ago for $175 million only to refinance several months ago for $350 million! Some tenants upon lease renewal had increases upward to a thousand dollars! We are working people, where are we to go?”

On June 1st the conference kicked off with speakers, including renowned scholar on gentrification Professor Neil Smith, activist Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn and Dr. Mindy Fullilove, author of “Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It.”

There were eight workshops on June 2 including Senior Citizen Protection, Know Your Housing Rights, Building Alliances that featured tenant activists from across the city sharing experiences fighting gentrification, and authors Deborah and Rod Wallace presented their carefully researched book, “A Plague on Your Houses” that looked at the New York City’s devastated policy of “planned shrinkage” that uprooted 2 million working poor people of color.

Robert Fitch, author of “The Assassination of New York” traced the City’s ruling elite destruction of its manufacturing base replaced with finance, insurance and real estate as the growth engine of the city aimed at the depopulating of blue collar workers.